


Time Keeps On Repeating

by AndreaLyn



Series: Time [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), House M.D.
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world was supposed to end, but the Doctor had stopped it. Or at least, he thought he had before he was made to do it over and over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Keeps On Repeating

The day the world was supposed to end was May 13th, 2008 in a little town in New Jersey (but not any New New New New Jersey), outside a hospital the Doctor had never heard of. And yet, there he was, just about, no companion to speak of, not just yet as Donna was lost in the confines of family and coffee and the corporate same-old workhorse and the Doctor was toddling about, preventing disaster and all.

He had done it, but in the process, the death count had amassed to a grand total of one hundred, including the blond doctor who’d helped him all the way. The Chronogenes were watching the Doctor with critical eyes while he shook his head, taking yet another pulse. “Dead,” he said flatly.

“We cannot allow this.”

The Doctor shook his head, rising to his feet sharply, eyes wide and furious. “What do you mean, you can’t allow this? I saved the world for you. That disease was poised to explode, very much literally, thank you very much _and_!” he trailed off, punctuating that word as though a jab with a sword. “And I stopped it!”

“You have let too many die,” the main Chronogene informed him, voice like a clock, all digital and mechanic. “Too many with destinies.” The point of a hand was like a clock’s hand, to the bodies splayed around the Doctor’s feet. “You will do it again.”

“No, I most certainly will not,” the Doctor insisted, eyes cold and sharp, but before he could protest, everything went a brilliant shade of white. Everything went backwards, enough to make the Doctor feel sick to the stomach; a rather nasty side effect of travelling back in time without Gallifreyan technology.

And those damn aliens had put him back twenty-four hours.

“Damn it.”

*

 _Day Two_

Like a really annoying Groundhog Day without Bill Murray to liven the screen, the Doctor had decided what this was: a nuisance in the highest sense. He’d arrived back a day before, stomach sick and both hearts beating away while a persistent Australian accent narrated to him the benefits of the hospital. What had he done? Oh, _right_ , he’d used his psychic paper to convince the man he was there to evaluate the hospital’s efficiency, acting as a consultant and all that boring claptrap.

Which left him with a far trickier issue. How to save the world, excise an exploding tumour that could cause the world’s death three times over and reduce the body count to nil?

“Doctor Smith?”

“Hm?” The Doctor came back to himself. “What? Yes, you look better with blond hair,” he narrated quickly. “What was the question?”

“I asked if you wanted to go see radiology,” the man asked.

Doctor Chase, he thought it was. One of the ones who had been so good to help him. He’d been sacked by his former employer, but his former-employer’s employer had been good enough to offer him an Attending’s position in the ICU, with a side job in the NICU, from what the man had told him a day ago while they were running through the halls in a mad treasure hunt for equipment.

“Sure,” the Doctor drew out the word, still trying to place why he had been sent back and if he couldn’t just possibly loaf a little. “Everyone could do with a little radiology in their lives.”

They wandered down the halls. “Dr. Reed is in,” Dr. Chase informed him. “And she should be able to show you the capabilities of our systems.”

The Doctor, meanwhile, was turning his sonic screwdriver over and over again in his pockets, deep in thought while still managing to reply. “Probably won’t be enough,” he mused to himself, glancing back to Dr. Chase. “Best keep those hands of yours clean. Never know when you might have to scrub in.”

Later, Dr. Chase would wonder how the strange man from abroad had known about the upcoming emergency surgery.

“How about your patients,” the Doctor asked, rapid-fire as ever. “Can I see some of them? How about _rounds_ , you could take me on those!” he encouraged, all too eager suddenly. “I’ll stand very, very still and I won’t even muck about when you ask what plural effusions might be due to.” He gave Dr. Chase his most _brilliant_ and winning smile, the grin widening when he got assent to follow along and wandered after him like a puppy. Like a puppy in a labcoat. Like a Labrador puppy in a labcoat. Like a Labrador puppy in a white labcoat ready to shed off its skin. “Quite the operation you’ve got here, really. Teaching hospital, you said. Suppose you get all sorts of strange cases.”

“Those go to Dr. House.” There was a note of bitterness in the man’s tone, which only made the Doctor very, very curious. _What has Dr. House done to you, little golden retriever?_

Maybe the dog comparison hadn’t worn off just yet.

“Well,” the Doctor drew out the single word, making it more of a groan than an actual word, tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth. “We could sneak in, quiet as mice.”

“Or not.”

Right. So, step one was to get it out of the patient with the exploding, world-ending tumour (who knew where they had even picked it up from) and see if an earlier surgery might not stop the catastrophe. And that meant he needed the good doctor’s fingers to do their part.

“Well,” the Doctor drawled once more. “I’ve got the best surgeon, now don’t I? I’m afraid that’s an actual question you’ll have to answer. I need to see someone about their intensive and critical patient care.” Because he couldn’t have some clumsy doctor fumbling about and even if he was _The_ Doctor, the definite article, perhaps there were some uses of the medical sort. “Would that be the famed Doctor House?”

“He’s good,” Dr. Chase admitted, hand opening the door to the clinic.

“But is he the best?”

“Yes.”

And a bad liar was Dr. Chase too. The Doctor made note of this, almost gliding his way through the halls and into the clinic, his hands still shoved in his pockets. It tented his trousers a little, but didn’t take away from the air of him as a tourist, just distractedly taking in the sights of the little hospital that could.

“Well, then,” the Doctor said brightly. “This is the end of our tour, is it?”

“I’ve got work,” Dr. Chase offered apologetically with a bit of a shrug. He left the Doctor wondering three thoughts, all at once _god bless Time Lord senses_. Where was that bloody patient, who was the surgeon he’d need, and what did Dr. Chase have to lie about, not to mention why he was so terrible a liar. Maybe the last question was split in two parts, but the Doctor processed it in no time.

He watched Dr. Chase wander off (Jack would’ve liked him. Not a bad behind on him, though they didn’t exactly have time for hellos, not according to the clock).

Twenty three hours and counting. With a flick of his pocket, the sonic screwdriver was engaged and he was at the computer, searching the patient records to see just who was carrying an alien tumour bent on destroying the world and just which patient bed one could find them in when they weren’t in surgery.

The Doctor knew the layout of the hospital by now and had little trouble manoeuvring each of its rooms and stairwells, each level of this godforsaken place that was the setting for the end of the world.

Five hours later, the Doctor’s hair looked it’d gone through the Battle of the Somme and maybe the Battle of Zorgaxian, in only a couple of hours. It was ridiculously on end and his fingers were sore from the pace he was typing at to research every last bloody doctor at Princeton-Plainsboro, getting all _sorts_ of facts. _Who knew that Dr. House could be sued so often and still retain tenure? And really, why is Dr. Wilson treating his resume like a personals ad for women?_ And the Doctor had even worked through the annoying child with freckles who had asked, ‘cooool, can you do that on video games too?’

A few zaps here and there provided that Dr. Foreman (formerly of the hospital) was an _excellent_ brain surgeon, which the Doctor put aside to recall later. It also turned up from several in-house reports that Dr. House had a way of being…well, a bit of a rogue. The Doctor filed that away in his mind, as he tended to like that in a man. He was well-published. Well-documented. Well-noticed, which cramped the Doctor’s idle thought that he could take the man with him in the TARDIS. Well, that, and the cane would likely prove to be a detriment.

That meant that the search for dextrous surgeons at PPTH narrowed itself down to three. A man named Dr. Keeling, who specialized in organ transplants, a cardiologist by name of Dr. C. Smythe, and …

“Well, now someone’s a crap liar,” the Doctor mumbled to himself, printing off the profiles, the last of them featuring a Doctor who could’ve passed for Doogie Howser. Dr. Robert Chase, intensivist. It appeared that House preferred to let other people do his dirty work and the hospital liked to feature that.

Though, for reasons he wasn’t about to take the time to understand (he really didn’t fancy being so frustrated by humans), he chose to go see Miss-Doctor-Smythe first and see if she wasn’t interested in a bit of elective surgery.

*

“You lied to me.”

He’d found the good Doctor Chase working on samples in the lab and he’d just wandered in, all too easily. Doctor Smythe, as it turned out, had ‘ethical issues’ operating on a patient for something that was considered elective surgery and even though the Doctor had tried convincing her that there was a tumour inside him, all the tests said otherwise. Especially since none of Patient X’s tests showed signs of anything inside the patient being an _explosive_ tumour. So back he was to square one with the option of talking to Dr. Keeling later.

Dr. Chase glanced up a minute amount and looked through his goggles at the Doctor. “I barely know you, how did I lie to you?”

“Well, technically yes, you’re right, you didn’t ‘lie’ to me,” the Doctor blathered on distractedly, picking up several test tubes as he lurked around the lab, never stopping his movements. “But I needed to know if the great Doctor House was as great a surgeon as he is a thinker and in the case that he wasn’t, I was expecting a name in his place. And _you_ ,” the Doctor said, drawing out the word, “did not happen to tell me that on the short list of doctors and surgeons in this hospital who could be substituted in place of the great, fantastical, incredible Doctor House, you _did not_ tell me that you appeared on it.” He held up a clear liquid with iridescent purple flakes in it. “I don’t like people who waste my time, you know,” he said, voice distant, yet it held a warning tone to it.

Funny. Normally people piped in apologetically at that point in time, but Dr. Chase just kept analyzing samples. So the Doctor decided to do what he did best; talk.

“Doctor Smythe informed me that ethically, she ‘cannot perform this operation’,” he echoed in a perfect American accent (with added falsetto!). “And I’ve got Dr. Keeling to talk to, but he’ll probably tell me that the heart of the problem…” Heart, get it? It was a good joke, really. “…is that my patient is not his patient and therefore he can’t help me.”

“And you think I can?” The good Dr. Chase expressed dubiously. “Try Dr. Wilson,” he offered, shelving away his tests and making some notes. He’d yet to look up at the Doctor. “Or Dr. Cameron. She’s very good with patients.”

“I’ve read their files and Dr. Cameron is good with _feelings_ ,” the Doctor nearly snapped, his patience stressed by the fact that he’d already lived through this day once and had already met the esteemed Dr. Cameron, who was a lovely woman, but who cared just a smidgen too much to be helpful in this particular situation where dexterity and swift, precise cuts were needed. They could all talk about their feelings and their morals later on. “And I’m not dealing with cancer, Robert Chase,” he finished, voice thick and stern.

And that apparently did the trick because Dr. Chase finally looked up from his tests and glared heavily at the Doctor.

 _Good. A reaction._

“Don’t,” he said sharply.

“Don’t what?” And just like that, it was like the Doctor had never been impatient or annoyed in the first place and was as casual as before. Maybe it was a teacher, or maybe a family member that had abused that name in that tone too often. The Doctor was curious as to the why, but if he fixed things this time, he would have time later.

That was when the pang of guilt assaulted him, all too eager to remind him that yesterday (or, the first today), Dr. Chase had been one of the many to litter the ground with their corpses.

Not today, the Doctor swore. If only that he wanted his curiosity sated. Besides, like he’d said; Jack would have liked him and if Jack would have, then the Doctor would have (and was beginning to like him; after all, Doctor Chase was a bit of a puzzle with a few pieces missing, carved out by someone who’d gotten there first).

“What do you want?” Chase asked patiently (and the Doctor had noticed he’d switched to the informal in his mind, just because it was easier to deal with when you worked with someone more). “I mean, really. I showed you the hospital and I have a job to do. I can’t just keep ignoring it for you.”

“I need a surgery done,” the Doctor said, wincing at even saying the words as he pushed his coat out behind him and perched on the corner of the desk, meeting Chase’s eyes over the rims of his glasses. “And I need it done well. So, are you my man or should I be having this conversation with Dr. Keeling, which just means I’ll have wasted more time just because you can’t admit that maybe, just maybe, you’re good at something instead of sitting back and _knowing_ it in your mind but never admitting it aloud because then people expect things of you. There is a man who might die and then the disease will be loose and you can stop that, Dr. Chase. Just maybe you can help me stop that from happening.”

Chase didn’t break from his gaze and the Doctor saw something there behind pretty blue eyes that gave him just the slightest sliver of hope that maybe not all hope was lost.

“Fine,” Chase exhaled. “Just promise you won’t tell Doctor House,” he pleaded.

“Your former boss? Why would he care?”

“Because he can still make my life miserable.”

The Doctor didn’t move from his perched seat as he watched Chase leave the lab, all the while the Doctor wondered just how many other ways Chase’s life could be made miserable and just how many ways his life could be brilliant. _Stop it_ , he thought to himself. _You’re here to save the world and the last time around we did this, he died._

So he stood and pushed his hands casually into his pockets, watching Chase walk down the hall as his labcoat flapped about, almost like a trenchcoat – like a man in a trenchcoat walking through too many times alone, until just maybe, he found someone who wanted to see every nook and corner of the universe.

 _Did I mention it travels through time?_

The blond hair was doing a number on him and the Doctor’s steady stance wavered just slightly. He’d assumed, before, that it was always best to travel in twos or more, but what was the harm in going it alone? No one to hurt, no one to lose, and certainly no one lost to parallel universes.

There were seventeen hours to go.

*

The Doctor really did hate hospitals. Obviously he was there for a purpose, seeing as the bloody Chronogenes wanted him to do their dirty work for them, but if he’d had his way, he wouldn’t have set foot in a hospital. Not after San Francisco.

What the Doctor hated even more than hospitals was operating rooms and even though he was only in the gallery, he could _smell_ the pervasive odours of the room downstairs, where Doctor Chase was performing exploratory surgery at the Doctor’s behest. The Doctor had denied a pair of scrubs (“oh no, we really don’t want the image of me in scrubs, really, all that pale green washes me out, no thank you”) and had gone on to watch, doing his best not to press his nose to the glass.

He leaned on the button that connected the two rooms. “Anything?” he asked, his grave tone betraying how serious the situation was. It had taken them hours to find an empty OR and now time was tick-tick-ticking away, only eleven hours to go. The Doctor had waited for an OR by sipping coffee in a canteen while he watched Chronogenes watching him out of the corner of his eye.

“There’s some mild scarring,” Chase replied distractedly, very careful with each movement of his hands. “And a growth.” His eyes lifted under the surgical lights and the Doctor caught a glimpse of that brilliant blue staring right up at him. “You were right.”

“Of course I was right,” the Doctor muttered to himself. There’d never been a question of that; no, scratch that, there was _never_ a question of that. “What colour is it? This is very, very, _very_ important, Doctor Chase, I need to know the exact colour. Is it mauve?”

Chase looked up and shook his head the once in the negative.

It was then that the Doctor exhaled the breath he’d kept in for the last three minutes (Time Lord benefit number seventeen). They had some time before things went, for lack of a better word, explosive.

“Good. Close him up and we’ll come back when it’s big enough to cut out,” the Doctor advised, thinking fast as to how long it would be. If they cut now and missed a piece, it would be useless and it was still in the process of being camouflaged by its tendency to blend in with the foliage, in a manner of speaking. They had to get every last piece out or it would just grow right back, like a really nasty little determined lizard.

The Doctor eased away from the button, only to hear the door behind him drawn open.

“This OR wasn’t booked,” a stern female spoke and the Doctor turned to find a woman he’d not yet met. “Who are you?”

The Doctor immediately flashed his psychic paper, assuming his most serious stance. “Just a routine check,” he assured, “into the skills of your employees. Nothing more than a consented exploratory surgery.” Well, sort of. The consent had come via the Doctor scanning the man’s mind and determining whether he really _minded_. “Your Doctor Chase is giving the hospital quite the reputation, Doctor…”

“Cuddy,” she informed, curtly, leaning over to peer down into the room and then kept an eye on the Doctor. “I’m the Dean of this hospital and if you need anything, like operating rooms, you should run it by me first,” she told him, words very slow and clear as though he belonged on a short yellow bus or something. “That way we can write it down somewhere and keep records.”

 _Humans_ , he thought to himself. _Bloody superiority complex and a bag of chips to go._

“That’ll be the very first thing I do, Dr. Cuddy,” the Doctor promised with just the right infusion of charm into his voice. He even added something of a smile to soften the words and it was almost as if he was watching her melt right before his very eyes. “We’ll just finish up here and straightaway we’ll fill out the paperwork.” That seemed to be the ticket because Dr. Cuddy smiled like she’d found a prize and gave a deferential nod to the Doctor before leaving the room.

When he looked down into the OR to check on the progress, the patient was closed up and Chase was washing up.

Right.

He had to get the TARDIS to forge some paperwork.

*

Seven hours to go and the day was starting to stretch on for anyone who wasn’t an alien and that meant that the surgeon he’d hoped would be accurate and precise was currently looking groggy over a large cup of coffee, which just wouldn’t do. “What is that, two milks, two sugars?” the Doctor appraised as he sat down opposite of Chase, not even asking for permission. He extended a fresh cup of the stuff, laden in sugar with just the slightest edge of an amphetamine in there. Not enough to make Chase shaky, but just enough to keep him awake.

“One cream, three sugars,” Chase corrected, which earned an appreciative grin from the Doctor. A man who liked his sugar (and judging from the way he was nearly fellating the stir stick, a man who also liked his oral fixations) meant that he would be on the go. The Doctor added an extra shot of sugar and gave Chase his most innocent smile as he sat back and waited for the questions to begin.

The strange part was when they didn’t.

Chase just sipped at his coffee and did paperwork, barely acknowledging the Doctor and the Doctor did not do well with being ignored. “Aren’t you curious about the patient?” the Doctor demanded, almost affronted. “I led you directly to a patient with a growth that didn’t show up on _any_ scans and you just sit there and drink your coffee like you see that every day!” More than affronted, really. He was _offended_. He’d given space and time to scores of people, things they could never even imagine. He was not about to sit at a table with some ex-pat Doctor of Medicine who acted like it was just another day. He leaned over the table, finger pointed out like he was on a mission. “An invisible growth that changes colours!”

Chase finally glanced up and even though he wasn’t smiling, the Doctor was empathic. Plus, there was a glint of mischief in his eyes.

“I just wanted to see how riled you would get,” he admitted, setting the paper aside as he leaned back into his chair. “So what are you thinking? We’ve dealt with growths before that multiply…”

“Oh, rub it in, why don’t you,” the Doctor muttered under his breath.

That seemed to have the effect of earning a brilliant smile from the young Doctor Chase and it was hard not to grin in return at silly immature things like this. It was also all too easy to forget about his extraterrestrial patient (no one _really_ had to know about that part). Things were going far better than Day One, when the Doctor couldn’t even locate the patient through the dense filing system of the hospital and by the time Doctor Chase had managed to show him to the proper place, the growth had gone extremely mauve and extremely lethal.

Today was a large improvement over the last.

“I should finish this paperwork for Cuddy,” he told the Doctor. “That way the next surgery won’t have the plug pulled.”

“She’d do that?” the Doctor mused to himself, sipping at his coffee and watching the way Chase’s hands were jittering and tapping on the table. The amphetamines, the caffeine, and the sugar were all kicking in. A cocktail of kick, the Doctor called it. Great for an all-nighter of studying, sex, or saving the world. “Woman of power,” he gave a mock ‘rawr’ of appreciation. “Quite literally. Right then, Doctor Chase, you go finish up the paperwork and I’ll meet you in the first free OR.” He said the words in a rush and was on his feet to leave the cafeteria, only stopping once when he came to stand beside a Chronogene masquerading as a nurse.

He didn’t even look to the side, just stood there with his hands pushed into the pockets of his trenchcoat. “It’s on schedule,” he said under his breath.

“Good.” The Chronogenes had a way of clicking like the second-hands of a clock and the words were always on the same boring old note. “If you succeed, you may depart. If not…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the Doctor interrupted with a rambled sigh. “Fall back, I get it.”

Maybe he should invest in some Gravol for the journey back. Just in case.

*

“It takes you six and a half hours to get an operating room!” the Doctor was near-screaming now, because they hadn’t even prepped the man for surgery and already his skin was becoming that deep shade of troubling mauve that meant very, very bad things like the world was about to end because of a shot started at Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital.

“When there’s a six car pileup outside?” Chase scoffed, stethoscope draped around his neck and blood spatter on his labcoat. “ _Yeah_!” He had raised his voice to match the Doctor’s as he snapped bloody gloves off and handed orders to a passing nurse, checking his pager before following the Doctor. “There’s still time for your guy,” he promised, approaching the side of the bed. “Get him into OR 2,” he ordered a nurse, giving the Doctor a look over the bed. “I know we’re cutting it close…”

“You don’t know the first thing about close,” the Doctor snapped. “You don’t know anything, Doctor Chase. Not anything important in the grand scheme of things.”

It had been said in the heat of the moment, just something, and later the Doctor would realize that his words had thrown Chase off his game and that was why they missed it. But he only had the future at his disposal nominally and right at that moment, all he had was a human Doctor, an alien patient, and something that didn’t belong inside of him. They also had an operating room and twenty-seven minutes left.

“You,” Chase snapped at the Doctor, giving him a glare, “can watch in the gallery.”

He pushed his pager and his charts at the Doctor’s chest and ran alongside the gurney to follow the man into his emergency surgery and the Doctor didn’t waste a single minute getting into the observation room, a hand pressed to the glass. They made quick time, the Doctor would give them that, but when the fate of the world wasn’t even in his hands anymore, he could afford to be hyper-critical of a species that was closer to single-celled organisms than they were to higher intelligent life. And oh, but he was sure every human companion of his would smack him upside the head for thinking it, but it was the truth. Companions like Rose, who wanted everyone they met to just be _happy_ somehow. Really, the less he thought of Rose right now would be better because he couldn’t fail this time.

Eighteen minutes left and they were making the first cuts.

“Come on, come on, COME ON,” the Doctor shouted at nothing and no one in particular, pushing a hand against the wall as he ran his other hand through his hair and letting it stick up at all the strange angles it had. He had his glasses on and was watching intently when he heard Chase’s pager start to beep with increasing insistency.

He wasn’t about to tell Chase about it and waste precious minutes (down to twelve). So he picked it up and read the message (‘Mommy’s leg is broken’) and the number (local, within the hospital) before leaving the room like a ghost who had never been there, heading for the source of the page.

He found it in an office inside the hospital, but no one was inside. He could still smell the remnants of someone who had been there, but they were recently gone.

The reason why might have been explained had the Doctor bothered to turn around and see the scores of people sprinting around behind him. If he had bothered to listen to the explosion nearby and the smell of burning flesh and building, he would know why no one was in the office. “Damn it,” the Doctor muttered under his breath, sprinting back for the operating room, where he found the patient, the doctors, and the nurses all in a pattern too familiar; the same one he had found them in the day before.

And just like the day before, the Chronogenes were flanking him.

“You failed.”

“Again,” a second piped up.

“I got the surgeon!” the Doctor snapped, searching for Chase. Where was he? Why hadn’t it worked? But dead men tell no tales and it looked like he was amongst the dead again, blond hair covering burns on his face. “I told him to…”

“He removed the growth well-enough,” the Chronogenes agreed. “However, there was a second growth in the patient’s leg. It became volatile when the surgery began. You will do it again. You will save the lives necessary to be saved.” With an extended finger, the Chronogenes began to manipulate the space-time continuum once more until everything that was broken became fixed and everything went back to its original place. It also left the Doctor wondering if everyone was critical to being saved or if there were just particular people who needed to be rescued.

The Doctor, who was standing in the middle of an empty OR room, could figure that out at a later time (good ol’ time, so much of it to be had). He had a far more troubling revelation on his hands.

“It spreads,” the Doctor realized (his voice echoing against the acoustics of the tiles), twenty-four hours earlier for the **second** time.

*

 _Day Three_

Twenty-four hours left to go, the first thing the Doctor did was go back to the TARDIS and start programming probabilities of what disease this had to be. At the very beginning, he thought it was malevolent, that it was done harmfully, but the more he thought about it, he recalled the cysts that grew in the people of Rorcrax. They might appear benign to an Earth surgeon, but let a Rorcraxian Cyst sit under too many lights for too long and they became mauve and just after they turned that lethal colour, they exploded. The Doctor had never read about the Cysts multiplying like this before.

He was getting closer and closer.

He had the patient (a middle-aged man who wasn’t really a man), the doctor (an all-too-pretty-for-his-own-good blond doctor who tickled the Doctor’s curiosity in the way a sneeze tickled your nose), and the means to get it out.

Except that maybe he was looking at this the entirely wrong way.

Maybe he shouldn’t be trying to cut out the cancer so much as trying to cure it (humanity would get there eventually with the help of some rather pleasant Venutian colonists). If he could cure it from the start, then nothing would grow, then nothing would explode and the Doctor could get Patient X off of Earth and back to his planet where thermal sources wouldn’t cause the chain reaction that led to worlds ending.

That still meant he had to meet, befriend, and get Doctor Chase to trust him all over again and judging from the day before, one wrong move would put him back at square one (or in this case, hour one).

The Doctor stared at the console through his glasses and ran a hand over his face, groaning slightly. Cure, cure, cure. How was he supposed to cure this when there was absolutely no trace of a cure before?

Two impossibilities.

He’d start with the prettier one.

The Doctor entered the hospital and nobody blinked twice at the man who came from the police box because no one wanted to see it and no one cared to notice. Well, that and the perception filter he’d built into the TARDIS helped slightly after that incident with the ruffians trying to set fire to her. _Ruffians_. Good word. He wandered straight to the Clinic, which had been where he’d picked up the good Doctor Chase on the first day, all those hours ago.

He simply stepped into the middle of the Clinic, hands in pockets, and cleared his throat. That had the advantage of getting both Dr. Chase’s attention and every other patient in the place, who looked at him with scowls and jeers. “Sorry,” he apologised on mass. “I need to talk to the good Doctor Chase.”

“You can wait in line,” a surly man informed him, one whose face appeared to be erupting in hives. “We were all here before you.”

 _Americans_ , the Doctor thought to himself, remembering just why it was he preferred the other side of the Atlantic. And apparently, Surly Man With Hives wasn’t going to take anything else for an answer, so the Doctor fibbed about his medical carrier, slumped into one of the incredibly uncomfortable plastic seats with a magazine about starlets with eating disorders and a penchant for whoring around. Maybe he should just include the 21st century to his list of places to avoid for a while. It was like…well, it was like touching a hot stove. You did it once and then you remembered why you don’t do it that often. Or at all, if you were anyone but the Doctor.

One hour passed and nothing.

Two hours and…nothing.

By the third hour, the Doctor was starting to scowl himself and curse the bloody medical system that made him wait and didn’t they know that the universe was on the line! He should’ve just flashed his badge and pretended to be a Doctor again, but he needed Chase to believe him and a moment in private in the clinic room would do that. The Doctor had an ace up his sleeve because Dr. Robert Chase believed in aliens.

Score one for the curiosity of the human race.

Now if he could just get in…

“John Smith?” The Australian accent around the fake name was like divine relief at that point and the Doctor raised his hand casually as he wandered in Chase’s wake into the room, leaning against the door when it was closed. “Would you like to sit down?” Chase offered as he started a chart.

“Nah,” the Doctor drew out the word. “See, I need your help and in more than a ‘turn your head and cough’ way.” He started pacing around the room, back and forth, back and forth, like he just couldn’t possibly sit still. “The world is going to end today if you don’t help me, Dr. Chase,” he said, lifting his glasses to give a very heavy glare. “And I know you’re not going to believe me, you’ll scoff and tell me I’m insane, but I have two heartbeats and my brain has three lobes and there is a patient in this hospital who has several tumours in his body that are poised to explode and take out the infrastructure of the East Coast, then infect more and more and more until the world falls.” He was dead-serious through every word. “Now, I’ve met you before, and that’s too complicated to get into, but here’s the deal. You have to help me get the cure or else you’ll die too and I’m very sorry that I haven’t been able to figure out a way around that because I’ve grown to respect you over the last few days and I think you’d make a fine travelling companion. At least, fine for a _doctor_ ,” he said, the words laden in condescension. “So, are you going to believe me or should we get the stethoscope out.”

Chase was looking at the Doctor like he had just told him that God was really a purple monkey and had gone on to explode in green goopy jelly.

Maybe he’d gone too far.

“Chase, I’m being serious,” the Doctor said, softer than before. “We need to find a cure. That way this gets stopped and you don’t end up dead.”

“Insurance…” Chase started, sounding wobbly. “And where does it hurt…”

The Doctor sighed and rolled his eyes. Apparently first he had to undergo the stethoscope and the MRI to prove that no, he wasn’t quite human after all.

*

The Doctor had been ‘banished’ to the lab (the one all lit in blue) for another two hours while Chase ran around with his tests and getting the labs of the patient the Doctor had nudged him towards, mumbling ‘exploding tumours’ and hoping that same curiosity he’d discovered in previous days would consume him. Apparently, the MRI and the scan of his brain had informed the young Doctor Chase that his patient was indeed telling the truth when it came to his extraterrestrial features. It was just a shame it had taken so bloody long to get through them. Maybe he should have solved the waiting time issue before coming to Jersey to save the world.

It would have been infinitely less frustrating if he had.

As it was, he was stuck there playing around with various compounds and drawing out ones he had brought from the TARDIS. There was no known cure at the moment for exploding mauve tumours, but the Doctor achieved ten impossibilities before lunch. He was just that good. It resulted in a palliative for bone cancer that eliminated all pain (had to destroy that, too early in the timeline), a really good aphrodisiac, and…

“One cure for the end of the world,” the Doctor mused, peering up at the clear liquid in the vial as he held it up to the light. He’d had to use the patient’s blood, particles of time itself, not to mention bits of the TARDIS’ energy source to create it and it hadn’t even been finished until he could find Chase and order to get him some bone marrow from the patient as well.

Mix of this, mix of that, column A, column B, presto, biff, bam, cure it is.

“Doctor,” Chase was breathless as he entered the lab, hair all out of place and labcoat ruffled.

“Great news, Chase,” the Doctor announced brazenly with a pleased grin on his lips, cocksure and confident. “I have the cure.”

“Okay, but…we lost the patient,” he said, looking bewildered and upset with himself. And with that, he left the door to fall shut before hurrying off down the halls of the hospital.

“What?” the Doctor snapped at the door. “You lost…hold on…” It never occurred to him to stop talking to the glass door, acting as though it was sentient. “How do you _lose_ a perfectly good patient in a bed, in your hospital, under your care!” He whipped the glasses off, charging to his feet as he immediately started to follow Chase down the hall in order to repeat the very same incredulous question aloud. Chase, however, was already out of sight, leaving the Doctor to wonder if they trained their surgeons in sprinting here. Or maybe that was just an Australian import.

Eventually, he caught up with Chase in the lobby of the hospital and yanked on his elbow to turn him around hard. “How do you lose a sick man?” he snapped.

“He was here,” Chase insisted, words heavy and insistent. “He was in his hospital bed and I was prepping him to get some more blood samples, _like you requested_ and then I went to get some more vials, came back, and he’d vanished.”

“He can’t run away!” the Doctor expressed dubiously. “He’s half in the grave.”

“You don’t think I know!?” Chase scoffed, yanking his arm away from the Doctor’s hold as he pushed out the front doors to keep searching the hospital. He ran both his hands through his hair with frustration as he flung his hands out. “Where the hell could he have gone?”

The Doctor followed Chase’s gaze to the ambulance bay and then it occurred to him, all too easily and he grabbed hold of Chase’s hand. “C’mon, back to the room,” he encouraged, and was already sprinting without a single moment to wait, tugging Chase up the stairs.

By the time they got to the fourth floor, Chase was out of breath, but the Doctor was barely breathing hard.

“Time fold.”

“What?” Chase echoed, giving the Doctor a dubious look. “Look, I’m going out on a huge limb for you, considering I don’t even know you…”

“Nah, you know me more than you think,” the Doctor interrupted and informed him casually. “Trust me on this. Now, this bloke of yours, this patient, he’s an alien, right? And the Chronogenes, which are the men who are preventing me from _leaving_ here and letting time go back to normal, they’ve got this place blanketed in time particles, little timey-wimey ball-shaped, complex things!” he continued, mapping these out with his fingers as he paced up and down the hospital room, all the while Chase stared at him dubiously (and almost looking like he was about to go run for a straightjacket). “No, _listen_ ,” the Doctor demanded when Chase’s attention seemed to be straying. “You never lost him. He’s been here the entire time, just not _here_. All these time particles are causing little jumps in time, do you see? That’s why I have to fix this faster than ever before, because things are going to go back and forth, back and forth…” the Doctor rambled, words going faster and faster than before as he whipped out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the bed with a vehement determination. “And things slip because time’s folding in on itself like a brilliant piece of origami!”

The sonic screwdriver glowed blue as it zapped aloud and where there had been no one in a rumpled bed, there suddenly was the old man, the patient with the exploding tumour.

Chase inched closer to the bed. “Are you seeing a patient in the bed too…?” he asked, voice sounding distant.

“Mister Anderson,” the Doctor greeted the man with a buoyant grin, immediately shaking his hand with eager enthusiasm. “Welcome back. Now, myself and the overly shocked Doctor to my left here are going to get you hooked up to a cure so you can go right back to living your life and _not_ ingesting damaging and infectious alien airs that put the Earth at risk. Are we understood?” He’d gone from cheerful to serious in a matter of seconds.

“Doctor,” the patient greeted, in the way that sounded elderly and almost senile, but Chase could see a flicker of recognition flickering past his eyes. “I’m surprised you were alerted.”

“ _Well_ ,” the Doctor drew out that word as long as it was humanly possible to do such a thing. “Call it pro-bono.” He spun on his heel, raising both brows at Chase, gesturing as if to beckon him out of the room. “Go on, then. Get the cure so we can get out of here.”

At that point in time, the Doctor reckoned that Chase had no idea how very literally he meant that. He’d figure it out in time, as all humans do.

When Chase returned, the drip was hung with antibiotics with no problem whatsoever and the Doctor had flipped through (and consequently read) four volumes of immunology, rheumatology, and two on cardiology. He’d have to take a listen and a look at Mr. Anderson’s vitals to check if his system was functioning properly ( _properly_ proper, as his species could shadow their additional organs to pass as human and the Doctor had the sense to look past it, just one in a boatload of various senses). But for the moment, there was an IV drip to work through a system.

“There,” Chase said, idly pushing his hands into his pockets and leaning back against the wall, pressing one foot there. “He’s all yours. Call me if you need surgery.”

The Doctor took a long moment to look Chase over from where they were standing, debating just what exactly a Time Lord was supposed to say at this juncture. There was the matter of checking the labs, discussing this with the Chronogenes (and how they had almost ruined the East Coast with their doings) and there was that tickle of a voice in the back of his head saying that as doctors went, Dr. Robert Chase certainly was no Harry Sullivan.

Who knew? Maybe he’d just grown with age.

“Will do, Dr. Chase,” he said with a bright grin. As always, he had about a dozen half-cocked plans in mind, but he’d follow through on one eventually. For the moment, he had work to do by flashing some pieces of psychic paper, glad that he was no longer Doctor Smith (that had been a mistake, really, good thing he’d had an extra day to fix that). Then, who knew? The future, the past, and the present all spanned at the Doctor’s fingertips to be manipulated.

Maybe Cassiopeia. Or Florana. He hadn’t been to Florana in far too long.

When six PM rolled around, the Doctor had watched a patient released, had a Council with the Chronogenes and was waiting in the brisk evening spring air that Jersey had to offer, leaning casually against the TARDIS.

He might have also happened to be right in the parking lot of Princeton-Plainsboro. And it just _might_ have coincided with Chase leaving his shift, bag slung over his shoulder and leather jacket fastened tight, even though the weather didn’t really call for it.

“You’re still here?” Chase asked curiously. “Didn’t your guy get moved out like...two hours ago?”

“Yeah, my ‘guy’,” the Doctor agreed dubiously. “I was waiting for you. I wanted to say thank you.”

“I barely know you,” Chase scoffed, digging out his keys and somewhere, somewhere around them, a car beeped in acquiescence. He offered a ‘but you’re welcome’ quietly as he shifted his bag, hair falling in his eyes.

The Doctor just slid himself from one side of the TARDIS to the other, scratching his chin idly as he gazed skywards. “That’s the funny thing about time, you know. You’ve known me a day. I’ve known you for about three, for seventy-two pure, straight hours and tell the truth, but I liked what I saw. Well,” he drew that out. “For a human and all.” And ever since Rose had gone, all he could see was her jacket in a full wardrobe room, making him feel empty.

Donna had chosen her family over him.

The Doctor was wondering if Chase was going to do the same. “But I suppose you have _obligations_ to fulfill. You might have a family to eat dinner with, a wife or child to go home to. But I don’t think you do. See, I think you’re as alone as I am, and I think that I have the control to stop that. The question is, are you going to say yes.”

Chase was inching towards the car, but the Doctor rested casually against the TARDIS, flashes of another blonde dashing through his mind.

“It can also travel in time,” he offered, in that nonchalant and casual way he had.

Now, it seemed, Chase was drifting back. “Why me?”

“Not to make this sound worse than it should be, but you don’t have attachments and you aren’t world-renowned.”

“No one would miss me if I were gone,” Chase interpreted, rolling his eyes.

“I won’t lie. You might come back a second from now, you might end up dead, you might choose to stay on a leper colony and try and heal the infected,” the Doctor said seriously, as you do. He wondered about Nyssa then, a flicker of a thought that ran under the speech he was giving. “But the offer is open. The door to my spaceship is open. Wanna come for a ride?”

Chase took a deep breath and the Doctor could hear his heartbeat racing and after a moment, a smile slowly spread on Chase’s face. “Just one,” he insisted, but he was still grinning away.

“We’ll see,” the Doctor challenged and opened the door to new horizons.

Why be alone when he didn’t have to be?

“So, where to first?” the Doctor asked with a clap of his hands.

THE END


End file.
